Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?


In our thirty years of professional audio system design and setup, we keep on running into two distinctly different types of sound and listeners.

Type One: Detail, clarity, soundstage, the high resolution/accuracy camp. People who fall into this camp are trying to reproduce the absolute sound and use live music as their guide.

Type Two: Musicality camp, who favors tone and listenability over the high resolution camp. Dynamics, spl capabilty, soundstaging are less important. The ability for a system to sound real is less important than the overall sound reproduced "sounds good."

Are there more then this as two distincly different camps?

We favor the real is good and not real is not good philosophy.

Some people who talk about Musicaility complain when a sytem sounds bright with bright music.

In our viewpoint if for example you go to a Wedding with a Live band full of brass instruments like horns, trumpts etc it hurts your ears, shouldn’t you want your system to sound like a mirror of what is really there? Isn’t the idea to bring you back to the recording itself?

Please discuss, you can cite examples of products or systems but keep to the topic of sound and nothing else.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
128x128audiotroy
It's more like I know what's not supposed to be audible.

Like Douglas, I’m still unclear how it is you know “what’s not supposed to be audible.”
If it’s on the recording it got there somehow. It’s ‘supposed to be there’.  Go listen to older jazz like the Swedish Jazz at the Pawn Shop. Audiophile recording. You here the glasses clicking and can almost smell the smoke in your room.  Musical as heck and on a great system just fun to listen to. Musical and accurate and detailed can and should all be in the same camp. Even great speakers and systems that have a different flavor can give you all of it and should. Jmho
You're forgetting the other side of the 'fun' camp. The V curve. Not about warmth and relaxing but energy and dynamics. For us guys who like the separation and shimmer of analytical systems but our music isn't up to the microscope treatment
V would be the Wilson gear.  Very fun with the new tweeter.  The IEM folks LOVE the various fun curves as they can afford to won a few different sounding ones.  Heck, Empire Ears www.empireears.com has two new full lines making it three lines of all price ranges that have totally different types of sounds.  That's like Wilson, Vandersteen, B&W and Magico all having three totally different lines of speakers in all price ranges from 1k to 100k adn they all have different curves to them.  Where would one keep all of them?  

Pretty obvious that with so many posts, there are so many types of sound folks like.  Great thread.  
@lwal22  Beautifully represented. And a really important distinction.

"an expression of...and a communication of that perception"

....Finally understanding that, for me, it is a photograph I’m creating, not a record of what was in front of me at the the time. but rather an expression of my perception of that reality.  And a communication of that perception. i find the reproduction of music very similar. In the end it is an interpretation of the performance we hear....